France’s Jewish community is watching the second round of this year’s presidential election with profound unease, as Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front has unveiled plans to ban the ritual slaughter of animals for kosher and halal meat and promoted a deputy who has been accused of praising an infamous Holocaust denier.

Le Pen temporarily stepped aside this week as the leader of the extreme nationalist party founded by her Holocaust-denying father, Jean-Marie, as part of an effort to present a more moderate face in the general election.

That attempt was immediately spoiled, however, by the revelation that the former associate of her father she put in charge of the party, Jean-François Jalkh, told a scholar in 2000 that he did not accept evidence that the Nazis used the pesticide Zyklon B to murder Jews in the death camps.

Jalkh’s comments were published 12 years ago in an academic journal, but not widely known about until a reporter for the Catholic daily La Croix, Laurent de Boissieu, came across them on Tuesday.

During a three-hour interview with the researcher Magali Boumaza, for her dissertation on the National Front’s youth activists, Jalkh, who joined the movement at 17, said that he had been struck by the “seriousness and rigor” of arguments made by the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson about the gas chambers.

That reading led Jalkh to consult a chemist, he added, before saying, in a passage shared on Twitter by the reporter who unearthed it: “the use of a gas, for example, called Zyklon B, I personally consider that from a technical point of view, it is impossible, clearly impossible, to use it in […] mass exterminations. Why? Because it takes days before decontaminating a room … where one used Zyklon B.”

Although Jalkh quickly denied ever having made such comments, Boumaza, who is now a professor, told Le Monde that she still had a recording of the conversation. “The interview lasted three hours, and it was he who spontaneously broached the subject of the gas chambers,” she said. “At no time did he ask me to stop recording or not to transcribe his words.”

Le Monde also noted that its own archives reveal that in 1991 Jalkh attended a memorial for Marshal Pétain, the wartime leader of Vichy France who collaborated with the Nazis, at which prayers were said “for the restitution of the outraged honor of this great soldier.”

Jalkh’s appointment clearly undermined Marine Le Pen’s ongoing effort to detoxify her party’s image — which led her to expel her own father two years ago, after he minimized the Holocaust and reiterated praise for Pétain. Recently on the campaign trail, however, the younger Le Pen seemed to pivot back to her father’s views, declaring that the deportation of French Jews to Nazi death camps by Pétain’s Vichy regime during the war was not a stain on the honor of France.

Following Jalkh’s appointment, the Council of Jewish Institutions in France, which is known by the French acronym CRIF, asked why would anyone would be surprised that the new leader of the National Front is “a traditional Lepenist.”

Unease over Jalkh’s past led to his sudden replacement on Friday morning by another party member, Steeve Brios, who is the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont in northern France. Brios has no record of Holocaust denial, although he is due to stand trial soon in a French court for inciting racial hatred by making the false claim on Twitter last year that the absorption of migrants has led to “an explosion in sexual assaults” in Germany, Sweden and Austria.

After officially taking her leave from the National Front, Le Pen campaigned among butchers at a market in Paris on Tuesday and defended her proposal to ban the ritual slaughter of animals without prior stunning, in accordance with Jewish and Muslim dietary regulations, as a matter of animal welfare.

Like her earlier call for a ban on religious head coverings, including hijabs and yarmulkes, Le Pen’s proposed policy appeared to be a strike aimed at preventing devout Muslims from adhering to their faith, but she seemed entirely untroubled by the “collateral damage” the ban would cause to France’s Jews.

In response to the proposal, the Chief Rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia, told Agence France-Presse Le Pen’s idea was “stupefying.”

“Is it necessary to launch real religious wars in France by saying that it is essential to ban Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughtering?” Korsia asked.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Korsia has endorsed Le Pen’s rival, Emmanuel Macron, in the election to be held on May 7th. “It is necessary to call on all of those who believe in France to vote for Emmanuel Macron,” the rabbi wrote on Twitter, “because he now carries this hope of fraternité.”

Le Pen’s call for a ban on the ritual slaughter that would make it impossible for French Jews to keep kosher attracted the attention of Israeli journalists. Gilbert Collard, a member of the National Front’s political bureau, was pressed on the issue during an interview on Wednesday with the French channel of Israel’s i24 news network. Collard defended the move as essential to protecting secularism in France, and even argued that anti-Muslim measures were necessary, in part, to protect French Jews.

Attempting to cast the National Front as the defender of French Jews, Collard pointed to what he said was an outrageous example of anti-Semitism by leftist protesters – the slogan “Jews: Thieves, Murders!” (“Juifs: voleurs, assassins“) which he said was chanted during a recent demonstration.

In fact, Collard was repeating a willful misinterpretation of video that showed protesters chanting instead “Cops: Rapists and Murders!” (“Flics: violeurs, assassins“) while marching on April 16 against the National Front in Paris. That slogan makes reference to the violent anal rape with a police baton of a young man named Theo in a Paris suburb in February.

Nonetheless, video of the chant shared by Collard on Twitter and Facebook with that inaccurate transcription has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. (Collard appears to have gotten the video, and the inaccurate transcription, from a self-described French-Israeli Zionist who posted it on Twitter earlier the same day.)

Video recorded at street-level during another part of the demonstration that day — scroll to the 5:20 mark of the Periscope clip embedded below — appears to confirm that the anti-fascist protesters were indeed chanting “flics: violeurs,” not “juifs: voleurs.

As supporters of the demonstrators and journalists pointed out, there is quite a lot of evidence on social networks that this slogan about police brutality has become common at left-wing protests across France since Theo was brutalized in February.

Back on the campaign trail, Le Pen spent part of Thursday with Collard on a fishing boat in the Mediterranean region he represents in the French parliament. The outing gave rise to some bizarre images of the politicians attempting to fit in on the boat, including video of Le Pen demonstrating her dolphin call for the non-plussed fishermen.

The night before, Macron’s rhetoric against Le Pen was even sharper, telling supporters that while “she pretends to be one of the people, she is an heiress.”

Le Pen’s attempt to cast herself as the champion of the common man, despite her well-off upbringing, inspired some of her critics to share a photograph of her and her sisters with their father in evening clothes in front of the family mansion in 1988.

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i hope the Intercept do not pay the expenses of FB”journalist” who just pick up the propaganda from mainstream merdias. This is a cheap “résumé” of what have been published without any understanding of changes on France

a photograph of her and her sisters with their father in evening clothes in front of the family mansion in 1988. BUT isn’t that what we strive for…to better ourselves? I can understand attacking those who made it. . . IF it was at the expense of others – and preventing the others from making it…
The Jewish standard of slaughter of animals is in a manner that is the least painful – humane way
( I my be wrong – but I don’t think so). that same standard is for halal slaughter…..

I recall reading , and subsequently seeing a documentary, about the Holocaust survivors in Israel living on very little income…nothing to leave their children, but their photo’s as children in the camps were used to raise money for the Holocaust Foundation (?). These survivors finally sued the foundation, as the idea was to help survivors, but no, the foundation said the many billions were to be used to promote the holicaust, so no one would forget…and it memorialized the event..not the individuals.
Obviously the Holocaust was horrific…but there are some strange machinations going on around it.
I understand that there is a reason to promote it, to never forget, lest its lost among other brutal genocides.
As I’ve said before, they’ve done a good job reminding us with endless shows on Nazis …but that’s only served to desensitize the events. It seems talking about it should be alright…even Zyklon B. Starvation, typhoid, dysentery after being worked almost to death…seem pretty bloody bad, anyway.

I had never heard of Zyklon B before this article. Why is there such sensitivity about what gas was used.
That seems odd to me.
It’s that gas or you’re a holicaust denier???
As I like to board flights with ease …I won’t be using the Google on that one!!
More info, please….

Is this The Intercept that I know and love? After reading the above highly misleading article slamming Le Pen, it may be the last. Firstly, the concern over Kosher (and Halal) butchers is all about the ethical treatment of animals: “PETA Reveals Extreme Cruelty at Kosher Slaughterhouses” http://www.peta.org/features/agriprocessors/ Secondly the “Holocaust Denier” did not deny the Holocaust, only that Zyklon B gas was used in the gas chambers. That seems quite a minor offence and is certainly not “Holocaust Denial”. Is Le Pen supposed to know about every radio interview done by her appointees more than 15 years ago? I am flabbergasted that The Intercept would stoop to publishing such deliberately misleading trash.

How is it acceptable for someone to lose their career, reputation, freedom, etc., for researching an historical event, and following where the evidence leads? If the holocaust happened exactly as we have been led to believe, what is the problem with scrutinizing the forensic evidence, records, and testimonies, and pointing out any inconsistencies or flaws? To my knowledge, there is no other example of an historic narrative, such as this, that has effectively reached the status of religious dogma. Heretics are subject to punishment enforced by the state or the public (incited by the media), for questioning any aspect of the story.

This campaign and the Le Pen candidate are almost exactly the same stuff as the Trump campaign in America. For me, it is a tragedy that people like this can convince others that they are something entirely different than they really are. I do hope that the French voters are more intelligent than the Americans were. We have a real ongoing disaster in America. Trump is robbing us blind and doing nothing of value. I don’t know much about her; but, she surely sounds familiar.

I wonder how Pres Dump will spin his gal Le Pen getting all anti-Semite.
I can here Spicer babbling already about how Dump really loves all Jews, but that Le Pen is a “really terrific person” (gleep glorp).

“……..To date the most comprehensive representative study in a single country was published in France by Fondapol (Fondation pour l’innovation politique) in November 2014, based on two polls conducted by Ifop at the end of September and beginning of October 2014.12 The study reveals particularly high levels of antisemitism among French Muslims (self-defined as “born into a Muslim family”), the extreme right, and, to a lesser extent, the radical left……..”

According to a footnote about polling procedures:

15. The study distinguishes between sympathizers of the Front National and those who voted for the Front National leader Marine Le Pen in the 2012 presidential elections. Those who voted for Le Pen have only slightly less antisemitic attitudes on average than Front National sympathizers. It shows that Le Pen’s electorate still adheres to antisemitic beliefs although she tries to distance herself from openly antisemitic positions.

I don’t know if it is just me or if there is a frightening similarity in the antisemitic atmosphere in France and America to the Germans and much of Europe prior to WWll. Here, we have Bannon and the racist white supremacists who are showing little concern for the Jewish cemetery vandalism and the attacks on Mosques It sounds very much like the rhetoric of Le Pen, who is not from the common class as was shown in the article and yet claims to be of the working people. Just like Trump, she seems to be attempting to fool the voters into thinking that she has their needs in mind and is one of them. I wasn’t alive at the time of the war; but, there is ample history accounts and they show a real similarity to that 1930 atmosphere.

One particularly interesting result of the survey from France is the nearly indistinguishable attitudes toward Jewish people on the far right and (many) on the far left. When you entirely ignore the concerns of many voters, then candidates like Trump and Le Pen flourish.

There are many similarities. But there is one major difference:
After WW1 there were a wave of socialist revolutions in Europe. Although only Russia actually became a socialist state, there were some major archievments in Western Europe as well. Monarchies were crushed, universal franchise and the right of freedom of speech were enforced, working hours were reduced and rudimentary welfare systems were established. One of the things Fascism did, was to undo all of this and to exterminate the social forces who fought for this progress. It was a counter-revolution. And it was no coincidence, that the direst autrocities of WW2 were commited primarily inside and against the Soviet Union. Somewhere between 25% and 30% of the Soviet population were killed by the Germans, that’s (if you include Infants) more than 30 Million people.
Today there is no revolution to undo and no anti-capitalist world power including a corresponding movement to be crushed. So the prime “reason” for fascism isn’t there today. That doesn’t mean that today’s rampant Racism can’t generate another genocide (The EU- and US-backed military policies of Turkey in Kurdistan for example are close to that already), but it’s a very different historical situation.
I would suggest that today’s far right (which includes Trump and Le Pen) are better described as “extremists of the center”, as the radicalization of prior devolpments, as for me even as liberal extremists, whereas the Fascists of the 30’s represented as the counter-revolutionaries that they were a stark break from the former mostly liberal rulers.

Liberals need to stop this fascist mime. They are the ones who rioted after the election, issued death threats to electors, and use violence to prevent anyone from offering alternative views. And with Obama arming fascists, the whole argument becomes silly. Obama also claimed the right to kill or detain anyone without judicial oversight … the essence of fascism.

If comments do not comport with political correctness and the echoing in this echo chamber of a confirmation bias narrative than your comment will not be published.
This is a confirmation bias echo chamber here.

Playing the race card, or hiding behind it, is exactly how I thought the campaign against Marine Le Pen was and is going to be waged. People are more easily swayed employing emotionalism (demagoguery) than with logic and reason (See Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann)…which brings me to the alleged “Holocaust” because that is exactly how this alleged event with the alleged gas chambers has been sold done through the years.
Hollywood, with it’s emotive sequences in their productions, has been most useful in the selling of the alleged “Holocaust”.
In the Ernst Zundel trial in Canada in the 1980’s a German emigre’ Ernst Zundel published a booklet questioning the six million figure, he was charged in Canada with inciting hatred, “likely to incite hatred against an identifiable group”. How he was supposedly inciting hatred against an “identifiable group”, Jews, by publishing this booket that DARED to question the six million figure was never sufficiently explained in my opinion. All the hate came from this “identifiable group” and their organizations that committed numerous acts of violence against Zundels’ home and supporters. Zundel and his defense team had to use safety helmets when they arrived at the court house. The vitriol was coming from one direction.
The Ernst Zundel defense team hired a U.S. gas chamber expert by the name of Fred Leuchter to go over to Poland to investigate the places that were alleged to be gas chambers using Zyklon-B.
Fred Leuchter stated that the places that were said to be gas chambers could have never been gas chambers. They weren’t suited for the implementation of this deadly chemical. Zyklon-B is highly flammable, the places he examined had doors made of wood, no seal, and there was no exhaust system. The alleged gas chambers were located near crematory ovens. Zyklon-B is a highly flammable chemical that was used for delousing (lice) of clothes, mattresses, and housing (barracks).
Fred Leuchter took samples from the walls of the alleged gas chambers and submitted them to a lab in Boston. The Lab was not made aware of where the sample came from. The samples did not showing any significant amount of the Zyklon-B (cyanide). It has been argued that of course they would have found nothing it has been decades since the gasings, but, this is a failed argument. Strong remnants of Zyklon-B remain in the walls of the delousing chambers. If Zyklon-B were truly used, remnants of it should still be in the walls of the alleged gas chambers and they are not.
There is no forensic evidence whatsoever to support the alleged gassing of millions of Jews. There is no autopsy report on anyone whatsoever.
Also, the amount of time it takes and the amount of coal required to cremate the alleged amount of bodies does no hold up to reason. It would have required mountains of coal (coke), and you do not see this in any of the allies recon images of the camps and the amount of time that it takes to cremate a human body, even an emaciated body, just does allow for the alleged amount of people to have been murdered.
The forensics evidence, or the lack thereof, does not support the alleged “Holocaust”. The census statistics for European Jews prior to WW-2 and after WW-2 does not support the alleged amount of Jews murdered in the alleged gas chambers and ovens
Historical revisionists do not claim that Jews were never persecuted by the Nazis, just that this alleged planned mass extermination of Jews never occurred.
Most of the deaths occurred as a result of disease and/or starvation. There was a typhus epidemic and dysentery was prevalent. This causes the emaciation of the human body.
In the waning months of the war supplies, food and medicine, was not getting to the labor camps because the supply routes out of Germany had been bombed by the allies.
The news reels of emaciated dead and dying bodies were taken at Bergen-Belsen. It’s been officially acknowledge no gas chambers were ever used at Bergen-Belsen.

Of course, why would anyone want to kill animals that are unable to protect themselves from high-powered guns? Anyone who does that for pleasure is an abomination to this planet. We have no need to hunt animals for food. Actually, we have the technologies to produce foods of value that don’t require animal products. Join us in 2017.

Marine knew MSM would jump on the holocaust denier claim , Yes you too Mackey were quick to jump on the wagon, and now by dismissing this Jalkh she makes clear to everybody that she is prepared to cut out anybody from her party who has such ideas. That is called tactical anticipation strategy !
As to the slaughterhouse practices one should only take a look at the suffering of animals that are killed without proper stunning to conclude Marine has a fair point. I’m sure TI’s Mehdi Hasan with his super analytical powers , would call this obligatory stunning before killing a dangerous anti-Muslim and racist policy.

Malcolm X said, paraphrasing, that your religion is between you and your god and should be used as a guidance in personal life matters of ethics and morality and should be better left at home or place of worship. In public organized religion is a legal and social entity and must follow the rule of law as any type of social entity must.

In secular state with separation of church and state, laws are secular deliberately ignoring religious intricacies while in theocratic states like U.K. , Iran, Saudis or Israel state religion shapes the law to compatibility with religious laws.

The French republic is a secular state, unless it changes secular laws must prevail, the laws regarding social norms and economic rules passed by majority must prevail.

Le Pen temporarily stepped aside this week as the leader of the extreme nationalist party founded by her Holocaust-denying father, Jean-Marie

That statement is as true as this: Barrack Obama was the nominee of the democratic party and served for eight years as US president. The democratic party was a proponent of African American slavery of which the KKK was a political arm.

That attempt was immediately spoiled, however, by the revelation that the former associate of her father she put in charge of the party, Jean-François Jalkh

According to article 16 of FN’s statutes, it is the responsibility of the vice-president to take Le Pen’s place. Marie Le Pen did NOT “put [Jean-François Jalkh} in charge” of the party.

Le Pen campaigned among butchers at a market in Paris and defended her proposal to ban the ritual slaughter of animals without prior stunning, in accordance with Jewish and Muslim dietary regulations, as a matter of animal welfare.

The debate over regulation of ritual slaughter is not limited to France alone. In fact the debate has been taking place throughout the western world for many years. Prior to Jan 1, 2013, each EU member state had the autonomy to decide whether to permit the ritual slaughter of animals in accord with religious rituals. In the immediate years surrounding the 2013 adoption of a resolution by the EU Parliament that mandated all European Union (“EU”) member states to permit kosher ritual slaughter in their territories, a number of countries had already proposed bans including New Zealand (2010), Netherlands (2011), and Denmark (2014). All of these bans were accompanied by a debate that cast secular concerns for animal rights against those of religious freedom. In the EU specifically, these bans were also accompanied by the abiding concern for the sovereign right of member states to implement such bans in exception to the recent adoption of the 2013 EU mandate. Even prior to the formation of the European Union, several European governments had already implemented bans against ritual slaughter including Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Poland. It is only historical context, that Marie Le Pen’s support of a ban against ritual slaughter can be properly understood.

The renewed proposal by Marie Le Pen for a ban against ritual slaughter within France is historically consistent with her longstanding belief that the French government should possess the sovereign right to implement secular laws that apply to all french citizens equally independent of mandates imposed upon it by the EU. This debate is the predictable result of the countervailing cultural friction that invariably arises with the influx of immigrants who harbor religious practices that stand at odds with secular sensibilities of their host cultures.

“Mockeries and phrase,Babylon applauding for building an evilous world
Follies and craze, ghetto youths skylarking, not seeing all dem twist & twirl
Mockeries and phrase, states and church applauding for building the Western world
Follies and craze, ghetto youths skylarking, not seeing this true Babylon”
________________
MACKEY : “That attempt was immediately spoiled, however, by the revelation that the former associate of her father she put in charge of the party, Jean-François Jalkh, told a scholar in 2000 that he did not accept evidence that the Nazis used the pesticide Zyklon B to murder Jews in the death camps. […] [He] said that he had been struck by the “seriousness and rigor” of arguments made by the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson about the gas chambers.”

In the same interview, he also said : “even the problem of gas chambers, we must be able to discuss”.

I don’t know this guy, and his cultural milieu is not mine : never was, never will be. But, were it not for the fact he was already a politician at the time he gave this interview, and politicians should be particularly cautious about what they say, on such a sensitive topic more than on any other, he may have had a point in saying the latter.

It must be read in the context of France’s Gayssot Act of July 1990, which prohibits denying the existence of or minimizing the carnage of European Jews during WW II. The question one might ask is : is it the people’s representatives’ business to write history ?

And, if so, where does it end ? Just a few weeks ago, people like Mélenchon were harassed because they didn’t immediately subscribe to the official version of the Khan Shaykhun events…

Beyond that, there’s a climate within the French so-called intelligentsia that, if anything, has only worsened since Noam Chomsky adequately described it in the following terms in his preface to one of Robert Faurisson’s books, in 1980, comparing the way American and French revisionists were ‘being treated’ : “One might argue, perhaps, that Nazism and anti-Semitism are much more threatening in France. I think that this is true, but it is simply a reflection of the same factors that led to the Leninism of substantial sectors of the French intelligentsia for a long period, their contempt for elementary civil libertarian principles today, and their current fanaticism in beating the drums for crusades against the Third World. There are, in short, deep-seated totalitarian strains that emerge in various guises, a matter well worth further consideration, I believe”.

The more “the Jewish question” pollutes public debate in France, the more pressing political issues are relegated to the background, as is again the case in this second-round campaign.

Some people have an objective interest in feeding the monster. Why Le Pen herself, who must have known about Jalkh and whose comments about kosher food were particularly uncalled for at this stage of her campaign, is joining the frenzy is less clear : on the one hand, she doesn’t need to send another signal to that fringe of her electorate still sympathizing with her father’s anti-Semitism (Claiming France wasn’t reponsible for massive deportations of Jews during the German occupation already did the trick.), and on the other hand, she knows it’s counterproductive to her party’s normalization as well as to her presidential bid. The growing amount of French Jews within the FN’s ranks, including some of her close lieutenants, makes it even more enigmatic, unless…

Unless she and her team came to the conclusion she couldn’t win this election, but will probably be in pole position for the next as one of the two remaining alternatives to what she has relentlessly kept denouncing throughout the years, namely the UMPS system (an acronym formed with the initials of both traditional parties) her adversary has now actually called into life.

MACKEY : “The Council of Jewish Institutions in France, which is known by the French acronym CRIF, noted that Jalkh’s appointment clearly undermined Le Pen’s effort to detoxify her party’s image — which included expelling her own father for Holocaust denial two years ago.”

CRIJF, the French AIPAC, is not only the lobby the French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP) has designated as one of the main sources for rising anti-Semitism in France…

It is also the French echo chamber of the Israeli governement, which it backed wholeheartedly during the summer-of-2014 invasion of Gaza, while seeking to ban any pro-Palestinian demonstration, systematically linking them to support for Hamas. They also blamed Hollande, who until then had always remained a good puppy, for using the words ‘carnage’ and ‘massacre’ to describe what was happening in the Gaza strip.

Taïeb, who often calls the BDS movement “bande de salopes” (“bunch of bitches”), is also an admirer of the Jewish Defense League, a violent extremist organization banned in the US but not in the country of ‘fraternité’.

CRIJF is the only community lobby tolerated within the French public sphere. CRIJF’s annual dinners attract the cream of the crop of French politics. On the contrary, its equivalents for the Muslim community (CCIF) and the black community (CRAN) are respectively always and sometimes presented as nests of dangerous radicals threatening France’s ‘laïcité’.

MACKEY : “The night before, Macron’s rhetoric against Le Pen was even sharper, telling supporters that while “she pretends to be one of the people, she is an heiress”. Le Pen’s attempt to cast herself as the champion of the common man, despite her well-off upbringing, inspired some of her critics to share a photograph of her and her sisters with their father in evening clothes in front of the family mansion in 1988.”

All of Mackey’s posts on TI have one thing in common : they merely reverberate other people’s statements, and therefore they are entirely factual, but the way statements are filtered and then structured always suggests some kind of ‘parti pris’.

Yes, Le Pen is an autocratic heiress feeding xenophobic tendencies in a country which really doesn’t need it. But yes, Wonderboy is also the inconsistant product of a failing pseudo-elite, who has always been given everything on a silver platter, and who wants to destroy the product of a century and a half of social struggles through decrees, bypassing Parliament. “Cholera and gonorrhea”, as someone said…

There is a strong correlation between Muslim and Jewish rights. For example, in 2015 I (and absolutely nobody else in the world that I know of) noticed that the British government declared that it can deprive any Jew of citizenship under section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981, provided only that the Home Secretary thinks that doing so is “conducive to the public good”! (here’s the original document: http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06820/SN06820.pdf ) Yeah, I know, I know, everyone on earth thinks that is only meant to deport Britons of Iranian descent based on their ability to claim citizenship through their fathers. But Jews have a right of return to Israel and so I would think the Home Secretary surely “has reasonable grounds to believe that the person is able to become a national of another country or territory” (the British government’s own words). Jews literally are able to remain citizens in Britain only on the sufferance of that particular official! Now!

Whatever your religion, when you eat meat, that meat is killed somehow. Saying “knife bad, stun gun good” is as moronic a religious belief as any. One thing I did find out when I looked into this a while back was that kosher/halal meat *is* actually physically distinguishable: http://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/26243/dissertation.pdf?sequence=1 According to that, it loses less water, has a tenderer texture, and has a minor difference in color. This didn’t convince me to seek out kosher or halal meat at the time, but you know how connoisseurs are, spotting little differences where philistines see nothing. If that’s what their religion leads them to, I say let them do what they want.

I would say, don’t eat meat. It is unhealthy and vile. We should be eating a vegetable based diet, especially in this new sit down technology age where eating meat is not necessary for energy to do labor.

“Like her earlier call for a ban on religious head coverings, including hijabs and yarmulkes, Le Pen’s proposed policy appeared to be a strike aimed at preventing devout Muslims from adhering to their faith, but she seemed entirely untroubled by the “collateral damage” the ban would cause to France’s Jews.”
I don’t think this paragraph supports the sensationalized headline…

How ’bout some substance for a change, Mackey? Maybe something about real issues with real impact and meaning for the world’s people, rather than trite sensationalism to bicker over. Bonus points if the article’s original content takes up more space than embedded tweets.

Everyone cares about the innocent slaughtering of animals until they pull up to Micky Dee’s… WHO CARES if it’s halal or kosher?!?! You should be happy that Muslims are making sure there’s no blood and/or bacteria contracted from other animals, among other really beneficial outcomes of preparing meat in line with what is halal in Islam. What difference does it make to YOU if I want to prepare my food-I’m not Muslim-according to that religious custom. Should they be labeled? Probably. La Pen makes the argument that food was being prepared in line w/ halal and given to unsuspecting people-again, oh no… not my food being prepared in a clean and respectable way oppose to chicken and cow farmers of America who have proven to time and time again mass production of food cannot be trusted-which I could see an argument for but, a complete ban? YES you are violating religious freedom, you just are.

Shameful that you’re coming out in favor of unnecessary cruelty to animals. And these ancient, outdated superstitious modes of butchering should not be tolerated in what proclaims itself to be secular state. The neurotic obsession with the genocide of the Jews should also come to end (As if no other people in the history of the world has ever suffered genocide.) Better to concentrate on the ongoing horror in Libya brought about by France and Hillary. People are inured to contemporary tales of death and destruction, but they should be at least be shocked that black slavery has returned to Libya and there are open slave markets.

Why do people complain about kosher slaughtering which doesn’t cause suffering,, but have no trouble with hunting which does cause suffering?
Hunters often wound an animal without killing it & the animal can then suffer for days or weeks.

Yes, great deflection with a side of denial. And many people have a problem with recreational hunting, but suffering for “days or weeks”? Please… The vast majority of the time, at least victims of hunters perish instantly; whereas, Kosher slaughter demands that an animal be conscious while having a knife saw through its carotid, esophagus, and trachea, whilst, by necessity, being heavily restrained. Indeed, animals are usually conscious for tens of seconds and sometimes minutes. Sure, no suffering there…

Many animals endure prolonged, painful deaths when they are injured but not killed by hunters. A study of 80 radio-collared white-tailed deer found that of the 22 deer who had been shot with “traditional archery equipment,” 11 were wounded but not recovered by hunters.7 Twenty percent of foxes who have been wounded by hunters are shot again. Just 10 percent manage to escape, but “starvation is a likely fate” for them, according to one veterinarian.8 A South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks biologist estimates that more than 3 million wounded ducks go “unretrieved” every year.9 A British study of deer hunting found that 11 percent of deer who’d been killed by hunters died only after being shot two or more times and that some wounded deer suffered for more than 15 minutes before dying.10

First off, you shamelessly plagiarized, copying the passage verbatim from PETA.org. Second, that is, indeed, horrifying. Third, it does nothing to address the primary point, that shechita is, at its best, less humane than modern methods, and the worst-case examples are unspeakably terrible.

What would you call “necessary cruelty to animals” ? Animals put to death through halal or kosher ritual slaughterings are those who suffer most. And those practices are outdated, agreed. But you’ve got to see the big picture : meat production as a whole is one of the dirtiest, most disgusting, most inhumane and cruelest businesses there is, regardless of the way it’s being done. Most times, the precautions butchers are legally supposed to take to make sure the animals don’t suffer are being trampled on, and, what’s more, without consequence, since you can’t put a cop and/or a veterinarian in every slaughterhouse of the country. If you’re not convinced, just watch this hidden camera footage of a French certified-organic slaughterhouse : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgXm0oZm01o

Lobbying exclusively against kosher and halal meat might indicate a racist/cultural bias, whereas convincing as many people as possible to become vegetarians or to go vegan is simply common sense : https://vegan-pratique.fr/recettes/

This “unnecessary cruelty to animals” was legal yesterday and is legal today, here in the U.S. and in France. If radical animal rights fanatics want to come ban some or all meat, they should not think the public is so stupid that we’ll just say oh of course you can have a new status quo, how can we possibly defend what we’ve been doing for the past century as anything but a crime? No. Screw that. The Jews and Muslims make a nasty cut, sure, but there’s a lot of nasty stuff goes on down on the farm, and either we stand against the fanatics now or we watch them come and make a science project out of what we’re allowed to eat altogether. Based on philosophy that they pull out of their ass! If we respect cows’ rights today, why not respect mosquitoes’ rights, potatoes’ rights? You have evidence that a mosquito can’t feel what a cow can? What I know is that human beings can draw up a social contract for mutual benefit where we agree not to kill or hurt each other, but if you draw up that contract with a crocodile I suggest you be careful when you hand it over for him to sign.

Everything with animal rights is bullying and harassment. It’s OK for stores to sell a million mousetraps, but scientists are supposed to fill out dozens of pages about the “welfare” of the mice they want to use to try to find a cure for cancer! And in this case, they are going after the Jews. Well I say screw ’em no matter who they go after, even the Muslims. I’m not known around here for a love of Islam but if you think I’m dumb enough to believe that denying rights to Muslims is not a slippery slope, especially when they throw Jews down the same slope at the same time!, you’re not giving me very much credit. Rights are rights. The one chance you have to pick and choose favorites is when you decide who to admit on visas based on national origin. After they’re here legally, you don’t get to revoke all rights for everybody and tell me you’re only going after them.

“Well I say screw ’em no matter who they go after, even the Muslims. I’m not known around here for a love of Islam but if you think I’m dumb enough to believe that denying rights to Muslims is not a slippery slope, especially when they throw Jews down the same slope at the same time!, you’re not giving me very much credit”

Interesting………. if this was a story about Muslims only, there would be a thousand comments here (a lot of them from the haters) Yet when it’s a story about Jews, only four comments.
Considering that this site is overwhelmingly read by Americans; it makes for interesting insight.

@ DàMob…
While I don’t agree with you calling people “haters”.. I do agree that there would likely be more comments.
I will never forget the horror I felt knowing that fellow humans could seek to wipe out a group of people by the means the Nazi’s used. I found it very chilling that a family could be snatched from their home and then have a “party” person (SS or otherwise) move in and have their children play with the same toys …the family enjoying their china and art.
There was something so cold about that normalization of dispossessing people / families that way certainly I could see the same people being being okay with at least work camps..if they didn’t know they were death camps.
Since reading Sophie’s Choice and my sensitivity to the horror that book represented…I have seen that now, instead of a remembering not to forget, there has been, in my eyes, a very bad decision to constantly have Nazi and Holocaust programs and movies on almost nonstop.
I think that has stripped so much of the sensitivity away and almost produced an attitude of ‘enough already’…sad but true.

The other things that have changed as I’ve grown older was seeing the brutal slaughter in Rwanda, and the horrors going on in Africa today..which I won’t list.
I’ve also seen our government policy under Clinton to let over 500, 000 children under 12 yrs of age to die due to a lack of medicines under sanctions that Madeleine Albright was quite smug about. As a matter of fact, millions could (and would) die to get to a supposed greater good in Iraq and now the same horrors in Syria. A dispossession of a country’s right to sovereignty.

There is also the fact of Zionosts driving out almost all the Christian population that existed in 1930 and a greater effort to dispossess the Muslim population of their land and the destruction of entire towns and villages, so there would be nothing to return to, as was a condition of Israel for the recognition of as a state.
We have seen Israelis feeling as entitled to the homes and land of Palestinians as those did in Nazi Germany..evidenced by the Israeli flags in traditionally Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and the settlements.
The withdrawal in Gaza was nothing but a publicity stunt that turned Gaza into a brutal prison yard and gave Israeli’s another opportunity to dehumanize Palestinians by pointing to how badly they’ve managed under deplorable conditions.
I would like to think that people that post here would have spoken up as much against the treatment of Jews, in the past..as now do for the treatment of Muslims.
That is who is being dispossed today…the same efforts to dehumanize those fleeing for their lives being equated with rats, much as many country’s did during and after the Holocaust.
And for people that don’t feel as strongly as I do about the war on Muslims…they have another group to focus on…the Armenian’s expulsion from (by) Turkey.
People care…you just don’t have a monopoly on it…

The only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is increasing is Israel.

Palestinians had been murdering innocent Jews since March 1920. In 1929, Palestinians ethnically cleansed Hebron & Gaza of their Jews. In 1947, Palestinians tried to exterminate the Jews. In November, on the day after the UN Partition Resolution, racist, xenophobic Palestinians started a genocidal war against the Jews. Haj Amin el-Husseini – “I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”

Wars create refugees. Israelis were afraid that if they let the refugees return, the refugees would go back to murdering innocent Jews.

I believe it was between a 1936 census and 1946 the Christian population of then Palestine had dropped from 36% to 14%. Due to the the “ethnic cleansing” as you call it by Zionists …not Muslims.
I’d find a citation, but I expect you are happier believing what Zionists have done is somehow justified.
Prior to the Zionist movement, the three Abrahmic faiths lived in relative peace.
I’ll skip the facts that Zionists had no problem blowing up the King David Hotel, where the British Headquarters were…or threatening to blow up an entire ship of Jewish refugees …men, women and children unless the British let them through. It was the Exodus and the Zionists were bizarrely proud of that action as was depicted in book and film.
It was an ugly brutal creation of a state..
Muslims gave you shelter after the expulsion from Spain…and there are descendants that are a vital part of that society to this day.
There are many instances that Jews have been helped by Muslims.
As you mention a rising Christian population…is that due to Evangelical Christians that think you’ll be toast in their end time prophecies..unless you all convert? Odd group to attract and likely subsidize.
Believe whatever makes you happy, Jack.

Jack Green is an actual hasbara troll. (Scroll to my comment highlighted in gray if your browser doesn’t take you right to it.) What he writes here, what he always writes here — all of it — he’s spouted many dozens of times, and seen it debunked just as often. He’s following a hasbara script.

I don’t identify all Israel apologists as hasbara plants — not even most. But in the almost 2 years “Jack Green” has been here, it has become abundantly clear he is assigned here for hasbara. Among other things, he never comments about a single thing in any article here unless it pertains to Israel/Jews/Palestinians.

Brilliant point! People pushing the denial of the Holocaust need to be heard or else there’s a “big lie being covered up.” Just like people spewing white supremacy, the inherent evil in Muslims, the inferiority of blacks & Hispanics, or the barbarism of slavery need to be heard from or else there’s a “big lie being covered up.”

Perhaps you two fools should read the transcripts of the trial in England regarding Holocaust denier David Irving who sued writer Deborah Lipstadt.

It was filed in an English court by the British author David Irving in 1996, asserting that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book “Denying the Holocaust.” The court ruled that Irving’s claim of libel relating to English defamation law and Holocaust denial was not valid because Lipstadt’s claim that he had deliberately distorted evidence had been shown to be substantially true.

There is no cause so benighted and stupid that it cannot be ennobled by heavy handed censorship. It is frustrating to see bogus Holocaust denial arguments, but we would not see nearly so many of them now if it were not for previous bouts of censorship that made them seem believable. When you’re in a hole, stop digging!

The current situation in France with Le Pen is the result of other censorship laws, censorship of “hate speech”. Does it look like that is working out for them? No! What happens is that Le Pen gets threatened with prosecution for distributing pictures of ISIS atrocities, and then she makes a “reasonable” argument that if she’s not allowed to preach hate of Muslims or to show nasty things that promote hatred, then why should distributing a Koran be legal? I mean, the politically correct censors made it sound reasonable because she’s out there on their slippery slope and she’s leading folks further down.

The French could get rid of Le Pen, but if they really want to do so they’ll have to give her supporters what is rightly theirs: a right to say what they want to say, be as offensive as they want to be. To make good points that can be implemented and to make a whole lot of vile, awful suggestions that cause them to be despised. Allow true American style freedom of hate speech — minus the recent corporate domination of the social media companies, that is — and France will shake off its hate and move on.

– anyone who supported the headscarf ban has ZERO right to complain when it affects another religion.

– she’s in favor of banning muslim head coverings but merely suggests that jews should give up the kippah because it might “make them a target” of imaginary hate crimes and because it would show solidarity in the judeo-christian tradition of hating muslims. the law could technically be used to force them to do so – think of the burkini cops molesting female beach goers – but she outright pleads for them to consider it if it’s convenient for them.

– i’d bet large sums of cash that any ban on religious meat bullshit will also be selectively enforced. the cops over there keep letting terror suspects they’ve been watching for months pull off attacks so i douubt they have the skill to monitor every butcher in france.

– the main point that needs making: fuck the butchers. it’s 2017 and it’s bad enough that people insist on eating meat at all but to pretend you have some ordained, infallible “right” to party like it’s 1999 BC and brutally kill an animal is an epic form of entitlement.

– holocaust denial bad. and fire. fire BAD. but so is saying the west should invade syria. so is denial of more recent west-induced holocausts. so is hanging out with people like kissinger who seem to have escaped the scorn of people who ostensibly “care” about genocides and such. again: you either care about it all or you lose your right to whine about whatever select case helps your agenda.